March 16 2012 - Monitoring at Node 10

Node 10 is back online and counting of fish usage has resumed in time for the (unusually early) upstream migration of rainbow trout. Fish counts using our algorithms, combined with trapping at the fishway are being posted as they become available and can be viewed here.

January 18 2012 - Unusual Weather Patterns

When was the last time there was no ice on the river in the middle of winter?    I wonder how many people are thinking the same thing.  There are tulips poking out of the ground and it isn't even groundhog day yet.  Here in Southern Ontario, the air temperature is flipping back and forth across the freezing mark like Lake Huron chinook salmon vacillate in front of our fishway cameras.  It is going to be an interesting spring and another interesting summer indeed - just some thoughts about the current state of our crazy, apparently La Nina induced, but ever so unusual winter of 2011/2012.

January 9 2012 - State of the Grand River
 

We have never seen the Grand River in such poor condition since we began working on it 17 years ago. There is so much construction, including two new high traffic bridges, a poorly planned and placed pedestrian bridge (Walter Bean trail bridge in Doon) that will require people to hike across a City of Kitchener owned golf course (serious public safety and liability issues are sure to occur and it is a matter of time before people are injured by golf balls), and a forced main sewage line that has been installed with great difficulty under Schneider's Creek at its confluence with the Grand River.  The river is choked full of sediment and mud.  Our Node 1 camera (online since 2005) is embedded in mud and has been for several months.  This is the second year in a row that we were unable to  document successful reproduction by black redhorse (species at risk), and sedimentation and deposition of silt has surely negatively affected endangered mollusks such as the wavy-rayed lamp mussel.  This is also the first year that the river has not been frozen over upstream from the Mannheim weir in January.  Our predictions for improved water quality and impacts on fisheries in the Grand River are dire to say the very least over the next several years.

December 21 2011 - BRAVO system update

Node 10 in the Thornbury Fishway (Beaver River) has been turned off for the winter.  The fishway was dewatered on December 6.  Monthly fish counts broken down by species and the 2011 data summary of fish counts in relation to water temperature and river level have been posted on Node 10 links.  This system as well as Node 11 we be back online around Mid March 2012.

Node 1 is a non self-cleaning system, and maintenance has been hindered by elevated water levels due to flooding in the Grand River since November.  When river levels recede, the lens will be cleaned and image quality improved.

December 10 2011 - System information updates

Node 6 in the Rock River, Wisconsin is back online after persistent electrical problems at the dam.

Fish count summaries and species composition are now online and temperature data for Node 10 have been standardized to noon local time throughout the dataset for the year. The camera has been removed from the fishway to repair the lens cleaning system that was bent by crazy salmon earlier this fall.  It will be re-installed in March 2012 when the fishway is re-opened.

The Grand river continues to be flooded and we are unable to access and clean important submerged equipment (e.g., Node 1 camera and sensors) until flow levels subside.

Node 2 full duplex PIT system remains online and fully functional after continuous operation for 26 months and counting.

November 10 2011 - System information updates

Node 11 at Denny's dam on the Saugeen River, Ontario, has been installed and tested; however we will not be streaming or analyzing data from this site until rainbow trout migration begins in March 2012.

Node 10 was repaired but the camera and sensors will be removed for the winter.  Node 9 is being upgraded and will be online as soon as conditions permit.

October 17 2011 - Self-cleaning system at Node 10 damaged (temporarily) by large fish

We will repair the self cleaning mechanism at Node 10 that was damaged by a group of large chinook salmon in the fishway.  At the moment, only half the lens is being cleaned.  Power is out in Thornbury today, so live streaming will resume once local electrical service is restored.

October 14 2011 - Live feed buffering and bandwidth issues related to overwhelming popularity of live underwater video feeds...

On some occasions we have a lot of internet traffic at our monitoring nodes that interferes with the live stream.  The stream continues to buffer until enough data is loaded to show images.  We have had several weeks when we received around 11K hits per day at one node.  Our systems are using internet connections to send data to our servers for processing.  The public feed is a bit of a bonus, and the primary function of our fishway monitoring systems is to provide fish count and fish activity data for research and management.  If you continue to have buffering issues it may be related to user bandwidth limitations, but remember that the systems are doing their job in the background.
 

Our fishway monitoring and automated fish counting systems (Node 10) are not designed to indicate to anglers how many fish may be available to be caught upstream (as some of you think based on your emails).  The systems are designed to indicate levels of fish activity and timing/seasonality during periods of fish migration in the fishways.  Since the systems are at the fishway exits (upstream end) we are able to enumerate fish that leave the fishway.  Most fish pass by the system one time and are easily identified, size-classed and counted (e.g., rainbow trout).  However, some fish such as chinook salmon move up and down within the fishway and at the fishway exit repeatedly.  Our systems detect individual identifying marks such as lamprey scars, lampreys, fin abrasion, unusual coloration, deformities, pigmentation patterns, etc so we are usually able to count fish that move back and forth across our detector and camera only once.  This is not always possible and to maintain accuracy with our counts, we provide a high and low estimate and give a range of values.  This variation at Thornbury in particular, is related to the behaviour of chinook salmon in the fishway, and not our systems' ability to accurately count fish.